


i lose my voice when i look at you

by tinymark (lumoon33)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Fluffy Ending, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Mark Lee (NCT) is a Panicked Gay, Mark Lee Doesn't Know How To Deal With Feelings, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, canon markhyuck, n haechan is literally marks muse, that tag doesnt exist and it SHOULD, twisted and fluffy feelings is literally the best tag on this site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23318632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumoon33/pseuds/tinymark
Summary: Mark wants to name this. He wants to take all these feelings in his hands and mold them, give them a form they can understand. But he doesn’t know how to, so he channels them through writing. They always come out like poetry.or: mark is in love with donghyuck and he doesn't know how to act. so he writes about it sometimes.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 45
Kudos: 438





	i lose my voice when i look at you

**Author's Note:**

> honestly,,,,, , i dont know what this is. i got into nct pretty recently and these two just have this kind of dynamic, its beautiful and interesting and i couldnt help myself okay. this is a timeless mess i just needed to dump my feelings somewhere but!!! i think its rlly soft so if u love fluffy markhyuck fics this one is for you!  
> this is my first fic about them so im sorry if they are ooc ive tried my best!! also i've never written anything like poetry before so pls dont judge me.
> 
> one last thing! english isnt my first language and this isnt beta'd so im sorry for any mistakes u can find.  
> ok that's all i hope u enjoy it!

Mark can't breathe. Donghyuck is on top of him, hard chest pressed against Mark’s back, pointy knees digging into his sides, fingers skipping over the tight skin of Mark’s forearms, like little ants running across his flesh, sinking into his chest, tickling his lungs.

He’s choking around the sheet stuck between his teeth. He bites harder and muffles his laughter there, twists his fingers against the mattress, his nails dragging over the surface. He wishes he could move, scratch at his own skin instead, dig and dig until he can clasp his hands around his heart and force it to stop beating.

He wishes he could scratch at Donghyuck, peel his skin and replace it with his own. He wants to dig and dig until he can clasp his hands around his heart and force it to beat as fast as Mark’s own.

Instead, he pushes his head back with a shallow laughter, he wiggles and stretches until he can get Donghyuck off of him. They roll around, knees bumping and elbows colliding and breaths mingling until they trade places.

Mark is the one trapping Donghyuck against the mattress now. Donghyuck looks up at him giggling, rumpled and red and out of breath. He’s all soft lines and glinting eyes and Mark has to blink away because looking at him is like looking directly into the sun. Mark thinks, _I’d go blind for you_.

He says, “you’re an asshole, man”.

Donghyuck snorts louder, bends his knees so suddenly that Mark scoots even further up his torso, almost falling out of bed with the force of it.

And he is so tired. Lack of sleep, endless plane trips, hours spent in practice rooms; all of it curls around Mark’s corners and tugs at his seams. He feels like he’s about to burst open into a million tiny cotton pieces. But when he opens his mouth again to complain, laughter bubbles out of him violently and unexpectedly. He doubles over, hands pressed up against Donghyuck’s shoulders, sweat damping his palms.

Donghyuck is still looking up at him, squinting eyes and half-open mouth and pink lips. Mark wants him to feel his exhaustion, he wants him to pay for interrupting the few hours of sleep he can get, he wants to lean down and bite at his moles, sink his nails into Donghyuck’s wrists and carve his own desperation there.

He can’t do any of that, though. He doesn’t even know what he’s desperate for. Instead, he reaches out and curls his hand around Donghyuck’s neck, far more gentle than he should. He traces the curve of his ear with his fingertips, he tugs at his lob, hard, and scrunches up his nose. Eyes on Donghyuck's chin, ‘cause looking further up is dangerous, too bright.

It dulls the need, Donghyuck’s skin pinched between his fingers. But Mark's breath is still shallow and he can feel his heart pounding behind his eyes, beating in his throat, taking up more space than it is allowed to. Donghyuck touches his wrist then, lightly at first, like honey dripping down his skin. Then, he holds on tighter, squeezes harder, and Mark thinks, _not enough_.

But he can’t speak. He can’t move, he can’t _breathe_. All he can do is stare at Donghyuck's fingers around his arm, gentle but firm, at the contrast between their skins. Donghyuck is sun kissed, honey licked, flower soft. Mark is pale and plain and rough. He wants to melt into him. He wants to shake him off and push him away.

Donghyuk tugs at his wrist, whispers, “please”.

But Mark doesn’t have the chance to ask what he means with that, what he wants from him. Because, suddenly, Taeyong is calling Haechan’s name and Donghyuck is pushing Mark off of him and scrambling out of the bed. He runs out of the room without looking back.

Mark stays there, dumbfounded, his nails digging into the skin of his own thighs.

He writes: _there's dust under my nails and i touch you like something dirty. i hope you smear all over my fingertips and stain my breath._

_\---_

The breeze is cold in the shore, salty and heavy, it clings to Mark’s body like sweat. His hair is dripping freezing droplets down his back, and his wet t-shirt hangs from his shoulders like a second skin.

He’s shivering, but he’s hot. He’s burning inside out, bubbling down his stomach. Heat pools in his chest and travels all the way up until it shows on his cheeks, full and pink and tingling. He is probably smiling like a fool, but he hopes the night is dark enough for Donghyuck to realize. He hopes the waves crash loud enough to muffle the stampede in his chest, the way this warmth is stomping on his heart mercilessly.

Donghyuck is too far away to hear, anyway.

“I’m going to look for seashells,” he said earlier, high and chirpy and full of sunshine even in the darkness of the night. Now, he’s standing by the shore, looking down at the waves crashing over his bare feet, foam surrounding him gently.

His clothes are still wet from when they got into the water earlier. When Donghyuck curled his fingers around Mark’s forearm and dragged him down with him, no room for refusals. Not that Mark wanted to refuse, anyway.

It’s kind of sad, the mood of the night, darkness engulfing them in a dream. They never have time for days like this, not really, not anymore. They have to steal minutes of their practice time, squeeze seconds into the little time they have to sleep. It makes Mark’s chest swell with emptiness, the lack of time. And he thinks, if only he could fill up all the empty space inside of him with Donghyuck.

He wishes it could be easier. He wishes he knew how to make it easy. There is a bruise over his ribs, from when they were battling in the water and Donghyuck elbowed him way too hard. Mark presses his fingers against it like it’s something beautiful, smiles at the pain and ignores the need to hiss. He wishes they knew how to show it softly, wishes he knew what they are trying to show.

Mark walks toward the shore, stepping over the footprints Donghyuck left behind on the sand, and his feet fit in perfectly there. Donghyuck shakes his head when Mark reaches him, sending drops of water everywhere. Mark wants to catch them with his tongue.

“We gotta go back, dude,” he says, tangles his fingers in Donghyuck’s shirt and tugs. “It’s getting late.”

Donghyuck pinches his forearm and Mark lets go with a yelp. “You are no fun,” he complains, kicking the water to splash Mark with it. But he’s smiling, moonlight in his eyes.

His skin is red where Donghyuck pinched him, Mark rubs at it all the way back to the bus stop.

When he’s back in his hotel room, he writes: _i wish i could be like foam under your toes, bending everywhere just to adjust to you. im brick-like hands that crack against your corners. i frizz all your soft edges._

_\---_

Donghyuck likes to sing when he’s cooking, and Mark is drowning.

Writing used to make everything lighter, easier to bear. But he’s been writing more than ever and words still clog his throat like sweet honey.

He sits over his hands to try to stop the itch, this thing scratching at his fingertips with the need to reach out and touch Donghyuck. To do what, he does not know. But he burns everywhere as Donghyuck waddles in front of him, floating in his oversized hoodie, his voice caressing every single bit of Mark’s skin like soft feathers.

And Mark doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know how to feel. His chest tightens up to the point of hurting when Johnny steps into the kitchen and wraps an arm around Donghyuck’s waist, as if it’s something easy.

Mark wants, wants, wants so badly. But doesn’t know how to take. He is not allowed to take.

Donghyuck puts a plate in front of him, pinches his cheek hard and shakes his head.

“Eat everything, hyung,” he says, as chirpy as ever, gentle around the edges. “You are so thin you are about to disappear. And we don’t want that to happen, do we?”

He pinches Mark’s earlobe then, tugs at it hard enough to hurt. And Mark wants to wrap his hand around Donghyuck's wrist, he wants to walk his fingertips over his knuckles and bring them to his lips.

He pushes him away, roughly. He laughs, emptily.

“Go away,” he mumbles. Smiling, because he can never help that part.

And Donghyuck goes away, still singing. Mark eyes burn.

He writes: _sticky under my heels with the honey of your voice._

_\---_

It’s too much when there’s cameras around them. Hell, it’s too much even when no one is looking.

Mark doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He can’t control it, the way his stomach puddles when Donghyuck leans closer than necessary, the way Mark's entire body jumps away from him as a defense mechanism. He acts before he thinks, as if his body knows something he doesn’t. It probably does.

He knows it shows on his fucking face, how nervous Donghyuck makes him feel. He’s seen it in countless of interviews, his fingers get all jittery and his his legs can’t stay still. He feels like a puppet at the mercy of his feelings for Donghyuck, they tie around him like iron strings and pull at his limbs any way they want to. He’s defenseless. There is nothing he can do to fight it. And he can’t even remember what was going through his head when these things happen. He loses control completely, and he’s all exposed for a few seconds, bare before the entire world, raw with a feeling he can’t grasp.

Mark doesn’t understand how Donghyuck can’t see it. Mark is so damn tired of the same thing happening over and over again, of Donghyuck's angry eyes following him for the rest of the day.

He tries to fix it, tries so damn hard. He reaches out, grabs a strand of Donghyuck’s hair, at his nape, where it hurts best, and pulls. His fingers scramble over Donghyuck's pants and he digs his nails into his thigh, hard enough to leave prints.

But Donghyuck moves away, leaves him hanging and confused and so damn frustrated every single time.

“C’mon, drop it,” Mark says late at night, when they are already at the dorm, when he’s had the chance to wash up all the nervousness off of himself.

“What? I’m just doing you a favour,” Donghyuck says, arms crossed over his chest like an armor. “Since you think I’m so disgusting.”

He gets it wrong every single time, and Mark doesn’t have the words to correct him, doesn’t have the courage to show him. So Donghyuck huffs and turns away, and Mark lets him go, because what else can he do?

Donghyuck always goes back to him later, though. Always in the middle of the night, quietly so no one finds out. He crawls into Mark’s bed and hides in the crook of his neck. There’s still a tension to his body, an anger that’s always directed at Mark, as if he’s doing this just because he can’t help it and not because he wants it, as if he’s at the mercy of whatever there is between them as much as Mark is.

Donghyuck sinks his teeth in Mark’s shoulder to make it clear that he’s still upset. He does it roughly, ‘cause that’s the only way they know how to show it. It’s hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to bruise. Mark wishes he would bruise him, wants to wear it proudly, show it for the cameras.

And he wants to name this. He wants to take all these feelings in his hands and mold them, give them a form they can understand. But he doesn’t know how to, so he channels them through writing. They always come out like poetry.

When Mark wakes up, Donghyuck is gone.

He writes: _mark me._

_\---_

They fight so often, and it’s usually Mark’s fault. But he doesn’t know how to stop it.

He just doesn’t know how to say it. How do you tell your best friend that you want to do the impossible and still keep him around? He wants to slip under Donghyuck’s skin and scratch under his lungs, he wants to bite honey off his lips and drink his gasps, he wants to get lost between his breaths and kiss between his thighs.

So he fights and pushes and runs away. He presses his chapped nails against Donghyuck’s sides to keep him away but at arm’s length. And he gets angry when Donghyuck doesn’t crawl into his bed at night.

“Make up your fucking mind,” Donghyuck yells at him one morning, because Mark is a bundle of anger towards himself and it comes out in the form of clammy hands around Donghyuck. Because he misses the way Donghyuck's hair tickles his collarbone when they sleep together and he doesn’t know how to voice it, doesn’t want to voice it. So he wraps his arms around Donghyuck's waist and squeezes harder than necessary.

“Language,” Mark replies, short and cold and sharp. Donghyuck laughs, bitter and cruel and so tired, Mark is afraid.

“I’ve had enough,” he says, jabbing a finger into Mark’s chest. “Figure out what you want and then let me know,” Mark tries to curl his fingers around Donghyuck’s wrist, to brush him off or to keep him close, that he doesn’t know. But Donghyuck doesn’t wait for him to decide, he pushes Mark off roughly. “Stop messing with me.”

He storms out of the kitchen and Mark wishes he would steal all these feelings and take them with him. But he’s still whole and full of words he doesn’t know how to say. And so damn lonely.

Mark writes: _crawl inside of me like a bindweed and curl your roots around my ribs. settle down between my jaw and collarbone. build your home inside my chest._

_\---_

They don’t talk for weeks. Mark can’t stand it.

He’s always grasping at thin air, reaching out in hopes he’ll find Donghyuck looking back at him. He tries to hold and bite and pull and always comes out empty-handed. And the emptiness in his chest is getting to his papers. He hasn’t been able to write for weeks, poetry used to flow out of him like a mother language, fluid and easy. Now it crusts over his fingers like an old wound, burns on his pads like a fresh cut.

So Mark crumples his blank papers, throws his pen against the wall, and swallows his pride.

When he climbs into Donghyuck’s bed, he knows the other boy is awake. Mark gets himself under the blankets and drapes his body all over Donghyuck's back. He can feel the discomfort in his muscles, in the way Donghyuck tenses up against him, ready to fight. It’s like nothing has changed, they’ve always walked on edge around each other, trying to tiptoe to not step on a grenade, but they keep tripping and stumbling all over, poking at all their wrong places.

Mark wants to change it, wants to smooth Donghyuck’s feelings with his warmth, wants to try to make it better, easier. He wants to touch him in cursive and read him like a poem.

So he mumbles, “Hyuck, look at me,” small, and softer than he thought he could be.

And Donghyuck does. He rolls around, moving the sheets with him, tangling them in a messy bump around his legs as he throws one over Mark’s hip.

It’s so dark in the room, Mark doesn’t understand how Donghyuck's eyes can shine this bright in the night, as if he’s stolen the stars’ light, a robbery Mark would never report, because he’s so goddamn beautiful. And he feels himself filled up to the core with inspiration, just with one look. He wants to write sonnets about the moon and song lyrics about the sun and hide all his feelings between the lines.

“I miss you,” he says, in a whisper. And Donghyuck sighs, as if defeated, and makes himself as small as he can to hide in the crook of Mark’s neck.

Mark wishes they could stay like this forever, wishes Donghyuck would build his home in the space between his collarbone and heart. He wishes they could survive just by touch as he curls his hand around Donghyuck’s neck, pressing his index finger to the mole he knows is there. But he needs to make things right.

“Hey,” he mumbles again, bends his fingers in the nape of Donghyuck’s head and pulls at his soft hair, gently, just to get him to look at him.

He’s speechless when their gazes meet, though. Donghyuck looks up at him with round eyes and soft cheeks and this confused pout on his lips. Mark wonders how they’ve managed to spend all these years between rough touches and petty fights, when Donghyuck has always been this soft, this open and pliant under Mark’s thumbs. He’s always been so easy to read, always so ready to give, with open hands and a bare heart, Mark can only curse himself for being so damn slow. He doesn’t want to keep him waiting any longer.

But he can’t find the words, can never find the words unless he’s got a pen between his fingers. So he shows him, instead.

It feels like his lungs are filling up with water as he leans in, closes his eyes and brushes his lips over Donghyuck’s as lightly as the breeze. He feels it more than he hears it when Donghyuck's breath get caught in his throat. He goes incredibly still under Mark’s touch, and then melts like honey, slumping against him and searching for his lips again, blindly, in the darkness of the room and with his eyes closed tight.

Mark kisses him gently, in a way he’s never allowed himself to be. He smoothes Donghyuck’s chapped lips with his tongue, coaxes his mouth open through light brushes, caresses every corner and edge as slow as he can. He feels like foam up against Donghyuck, as hands tangle in his hair and legs wrap around his hips. There’s this heat that goes up his chest, filling him up until there’s no room for emptiness, until he can feel fire under his tongue. He’s melting down between Donghyuck's fingertips, when he bites down on his bottom lip he tastes summer, and he drinks the moan that leaves Donghyuck’s mouth like something holy.

Everything is slow and patient and so light, they are surrounded by a kind of softness Mark has never experienced before. He thinks his chest might explode with the gentleness of it all.

Donghyuck falls asleep between Mark's arms one more time, breathing hotly against his neck.

Mark gets up and writes: _i have faith and i kiss you like a prayer (quietly and intimate and to myself only) hoping to make you feel like something sacred (i want to sin, scratch the surface, carve my needs under your jaw). you taste like a miracle and i feel like a sacrifice._

_\---_

Donghyuck wakes up laughing as Mark dances his fingers all over his skin, brushes his tips along his body as if he’s building up new constellations by linking every single mole he can find.

“Stop, you piece of shit,” is the first thing Donghyuck says, with a chuckle and his arm thrown over his eyes.

Mark just smiles and drinks him up with his eyes: the messy hair and the puffy lips and the tan skin, honey like and cotton soft under the sunlight that crawls into the room through the curtains.

“Language,” he replies, voice rough and with no heat.

He’s still watching, mesmerized as Donhyuck’s bottom lip disappears between his teeth, trying to stop himself from smiling. He finally moves his arm off his eyes, looks at Mark with sunlight between his eyelashes.

“Shut me up, then,” he teases. And Mark swore he would never make him wait again.

So he kisses Donghyuck’s lips, he traces the shell of his ear with his tongue, licks all the way down to the hollow of his collarbone and bites down his Adam’s apple. He sucks on a mole in the side of Donghyuck's neck, marks him up as Donghyuck writhes and pants and gasps underneath him, fingers scratching Mark’s back.

Mark thinks: _there are sunflower seeds over your skin and i touch them like something holy. you spill all over me like honey, i catch droplets with my tongue and breathe you in like sunlight._

But he doesn’t have a pen between his fingers, so he mumbles, quietly against Donghyuck’s jaw: “I love you”.

**Author's Note:**

> stop using the maine lyrics for the title of your fics challenge: failed.
> 
> please please tell me what u think about this, if u guys like it mayhaps i will write more markhyuck. thank u for reading!!


End file.
